Members of the Mt. Olive Baptist Church choir practice on Melon Street in Mantua for their role in the funeral — or rather, the 'homegoing.'

Peter Crimmins
/ WHYY

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Originally published on May 30, 2014 5:07 pm

This weekend, an old, dilapidated row house will be torn down in Philadelphia. That's not unusual — it happens all the time in Philly's blighted neighborhoods.

But this house is getting an elaborate memorial service, complete with a eulogy, a church choir and a community procession. It's called "Funeral for a Home," and local artists and historians are using the event as a way to honor the changing history of the neighborhood.

An Old, Ugly Building, Ready To Fall

The address of the house at 3711 Melon St. is painted on the stucco in a rough hand, right next to a bright orange sign announcing that the property is condemned. Sheets of plywood are nailed up where the front door and the ground-floor window used to be, but you can see the upper windows still have lace curtains.

Kevin McCusker, the man who will be responsible for the demolition, says it's definitely time for the house to come down. "Stucco is holding it up right now," he says, pointing out damage to the walls in the rear of the house. "It's ready to fall. This couldn't happen sooner."

There is nothing particularly exceptional about this house — in fact, it's kind of ugly. But that's exactly why historian Patrick Grossi, of Temple University's Tyler School of Art, says it deserves a funeral.

"The loss of vernacular architecture is often hidden in plain sight," Grossi says. "When a kind of modest house is being run down, you are erasing a century of lifetimes."

At 3711 Melon St., 140 Years Of History

The home was built in the 1870s as a classic brick row house to be rented to the many Irish-American immigrants coming to Philadelphia's powerful industrial economy. For about 70 years, Grossi says, it housed a carousel of renters.

In 1946, a single mother named Leona Richardson purchased the house. "She worked for a time in Baltimore, during WWII, as a welder, and then moved to Philly and purchased this home with her infant son, Roger," Grossi says.

He calls Richardson the patron saint of 3711 Melon: She and her son lived there for the next 50 years, watching their block fall apart around them.

When the industrial economy all but left Philadelphia, the Mantua neighborhood fell into poverty and gang warfare.

The Rev. Andrew Jenkins gave a walking tour of Mantua as part of the Funeral for a Home project, explaining what residents faced during Mantua's decline. "We had seven, eight and nine shootings a night," he said. "There were six major gangs in this neighborhood."